


Secure the Galactic Perimeter

by faufaren



Category: Bleach
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Child Abuse, Dark, Gen, Original Character(s), Psychopathology & Sociopathy, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-07
Updated: 2016-08-13
Packaged: 2018-07-29 20:57:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 8,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7699066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faufaren/pseuds/faufaren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A soul is reborn and all she knows is that something somewhere has gone terribly, horribly wrong (because she remembers another life so much better than This).</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Intro (Save This Soul)

Souls are tricky business. 

They exist in an eternal loop—living, then dying, then living again, until the end of all existence. (No one knows where a true soul comes from or how it is created. Similarly, no one knows how to truly destroy a real soul.) 

Usually, souls go to the places where they're supposed to go. But sometimes they get lost somewhere in the cycle, in the universal stream where hundreds of thousands of millions and billions of souls constantly move about. 

That is why Shinigami exist. They hold in their hands the responsibility for all the billions of souls in the worlds. 

They are the peacekeepers of the universe. The galactic soldiers of order. 

But shinigami are still also souls. And sometimes they make mistakes. Sometimes circumstances are cruel and a cruel shinigami is what comes out of it. Some go mad. Other times, in some rare, rare cases, so obscure that it nearly never happens, a soul is born just... _wrong_. And that makes a wrong human, then a wrong death, and then a wrong soul in Soul Society. And then, if it so happens, a wrong shinigami. 

That is how Shinku is born. She is a _wrong_ soul. 

There is something about her. Something that simply doesn’t quite work like the rest. It is a feeling that will always be present and will never fail to unnerve those who encounter something like her. Most individuals will never be able to fully identify exactly what they, within the very core of their souls, are truly sensing—the presence of an abnormal existence, an unnatural creature that will never be able to _fit_ into the universe as they do. 

Somehow, somewhere along the assembly line, when her soul was born it was built _flawed_. A piece missing. A cog out of place. A design in chaos. 

She is a piece of the puzzle that doesn’t belong, and she will have to live that condemned existence for the rest of eternity. 

Thus, the first time she enters the Cycle, something goes wrong, just as it naturally would. 

A botched birth, a step out of order, and suddenly her second life is ruined. 

And her previous life, every day of it, is seared into her memory. 

A slate left unwiped. Unable to forget. Unable to let go. (She doesn’t necessarily want to.) 

A reincarnation entirely derailed and skidding sideways on the metaphorical tracks, engines screaming, sparks flying, with that one little nudge to the side. 

In her past life, Shinku remembers that she had been a shinigami. Seireitei had been so new they hadn't even established the numbered division system yet. 

She remembers what they had called her back then. _Legendary._

_(Unstoppable. Warrior. Kin-killer. Demon.)_

One of the widely honored founding members, feared and respected, her name spread across the realms right alongside the name of another man called Yamamoto. They had been friends. (The very best of friends.) She remembers exactly what she had once upon a time in the far-off past. 

Now she's just a normal human who doesn't even have enough spiritual power to do anything except see vague shades of ghosts and maybe hollows. She can't even touch them. 

And everything is gone. 

There is no evidence anywhere. All the callouses, muscles, and scars that she'd amassed throughout her centuries of life in the past have all but disappeared on her new body, which is much too young, too weak, too soft, and _complete._

She's always cold and empty without the feeling of another soul, her life-long companion, her Zanpakuto, residing within her—fast, powerful and fierce like liquid lightning in her veins. Instead, all she receives is a gaping hole in her chest and gone gone gone, and there's not even a lingering echo of that glorious, thrilling current she once had before. 

And worst of all, she knows that even if she does die and somehow become a shinigami once more, it isn’t going to be the same as before because her new zanpakuto will be different. It will be merely a twisted mockery of her precious Jupiteru, because her life in this cycle is so different from the last and thus it has shaped her differently, and she knows that if she reaches for her past companion, there will be nothing there. 

But she still remembers so clearly. She constantly gets disoriented because sometimes she gets the memories of her two lives mixed up or she might overstep while going down the stairs because she expected to be about a foot and a half taller than she was in actuality. Sometimes she might see something and turn to point it out to Yamamoto, only to remember that her friend isn't there in this life, and that she's completely alone in this world where she can't jump immeasurable distances, can't cleave apart a Menos Grande with a single swing of her blade, or even use Shunpo. 

She's heard of a handful of reincarnated souls remembering some brief glimpses of their previous lives, has heard from stories and rumors and even a chance meeting with one in her past life. But never has she heard of one turning out so completely and utterly wrong. 

Some days, it just seems like a cruel joke to her. That someone up in the Court of Souls is having a nice long laugh at her as she flails around helplessly in this world, drowning under the crashing memories of a life long gone. 

She never had a mother in the incarnation before her last. If there had been such a woman who'd taken the role, she couldn’t think of one. When she died she had stumbled her way into a young Soul Society only by chance. With no memories of what had happened to make her die, Shinku had woken up in a forest to the gaping maw of a hollow inches away from eating her. 

It never stood a chance. She tore its mask off with her bare hands. 

But she has a mother here. Her mother in this awful second life whose name she can hardly even recall, much less her face, who died in a car accident with another man in her mouth. 

When the news came Shinku had hardly even blinked, too preoccupied with sorting through the confusing swirling mess that was her mind to think about just who this woman was that the man next to her was so devastated about. 

It took her a few days, but in the end she got the general gist of it. 

After that, well. 

From that point on it was constant hunger, constant fights to get out of the house, constant screaming matches with her father to get out of this ragged two-person family, that only grew more and more brutal the older she got. 

When her dad hits her for the first time she's almost relieved because this is the one thing she's familiar with from the jumbled pieces of her memories. Pure, simple violence—something she knows and can recognize most out of them all, and more importantly knows exactly how to deal with violence, and that's to hit back twice as hard. 

So she stays away from the building called home as much as possible. Though she has a curfew to have dinner ready by the time her dad comes home from work, she waits until he's finished eating, washes the dishes, and then she walks right out of the house afterwards and he doesn't even look back twice at her. 

It starts to work slightly better once she reaches the double digits of her years because then less people will question a child walking around town alone late at night. There's still some that do, that come to her with good intentions and try to ask if she's lost but Shinku has learned to avoid being seen. 

She gets no reprieve. Not even sleep. _Especially_ sleep. 

Sleep is a joke. Because she goes to sleep and then she dreams, only her dreams aren't so much dreams as they are _memories._

She closes her eyes and she falls into a life where everything is right again, everything is natural and things are as genuine as she remembers. All the lines seem to blur (even though they are usually smudged and half skewed for her anyway) and it doesn't matter which is the real world, doesn't matter when it is or where it is, because all that matters to her is that it feels like she _belongs_ again. 

There's warmth and gentleness and the overwhelming feeling of _not alone_ and she thinks that if she's lucky, she won't ever wake up again. 

According to everyone around her, it's a relief to wake up from a dream, like when you dream that you're falling, the ground is coming closer, the breath in your lungs isn't enough, and all you know is that you'll be dead in a second. But then you wake up, and it's a relief that you've survived, you're safe in this peaceful, monotonous world, and there's no more falling. 

That's what everyone seems to say. That it's good to wake up and know that you're alive. 

She should have told them that she hates it. She hates waking up. Sometimes she questions whether she's waking up or falling asleep, wonders which world is real and which is a dream. 

Because she remembers a life so much better than _this._


	2. Outcast (Friend)

_"Outcasts, callused from being in exile for too long, learn to thrive on being the hated; the attention and infamy of our actions fuel us to become antiheroes. Too often do we forget: we risk self-destruction if we fail to follow what we know is right; our talents too often become misplaced, misdirected, misguided from what could have been something wonderful." Mike Norton, Fighting for Redemption_

Children are vile, repulsive little brutes.

They are noisy and fidgety and have yet to learn the concept of childish cruelty. Shinku takes one look at the running, screaming, sloppy mess of children around her and she is beyond confused as to why this is how she should behave. She stands among the children like a brick out of place, quiet and still and _intense._

Children are afraid of her.

Everyday she goes to school and everyday the children there avoid her, her classmates refuse to speak to her, don't sit anywhere near her if they can help it. She walks through the hallways and it opens up wide around her, everyone moving back as if she was some infectious disease.

The teachers don't know what to think about this strange behavior, only to encourage her to interact with her classmates more, as though this was in fact her fault-- even if they, too, are put off by her. "That child is not normal," they whisper among themselves, when they think the children are too busy playing to listen. They know something is different (wrong) with her but they can't see what it is by her appearance, only that something _is_.

Because you shouldn't feel as if you are staring at a deadly predator kept back by just a thread, ready to pounce upon you at any second and devour you whole, when you're looking at a child.

She remembers a time when it was different. A time long past but a time she’d give anything to somehow return to. 

Two thousand years ago in Soul Society, she met another soul in the middle of fighting off a horde of low grade hollows that had invaded a village. He was like her, also chasing the throes of battle and the adrenaline rush of constant danger _(It's the thrill, isn't it?)._

That was back when he was just called 'Yamamoto', and didn't have any extra titles or names like _Captain-Commander_ ; and she only had one name, the same name (the only constant), and no other names (that don't feel right, never will). 

But back then she had long hair as red as her namesake—true crimson—and she was amazonian-tall—taller than Yamamoto, who was not small at the time either _(you've got to be the tallest woman I've ever seen). She had called him "Yama" while he had settled with simply, fondly, "Shinku"._

Those times were the most content she can remember being _(come here, look there),_ even if the two of them probably brought more turmoil to Soul Society's era of instability more than anything else. She remembers fondly of the time she had spent living in constant battle _(I've got your back),_ happy with always toeing the dangerous line between endless thrill seeking and being completely swept away by it. 

_(I'm right here, my friend.)_

Yamamoto and Shinku, the old stories had said, were twin demons, so close they appeared to nearly operate on one singular mind, unstoppable together in combat. Simply two souls brought into existence with higher reiatsu levels than any other soul had the right to have _(we're quite a pair, aren't we?)._

But a wrong soul is a wrong soul. Not broken, not chipped or warped, and not something to fix. That is the difference between her and Yama, who isn't entirely a wholesome soul either, but at least isn't _wrong._

She is the one who doesn’t connect with others, can’t figure out how, the one whose perception of the world is irreversibly skewed, the one who doesn't have the same emotional qualms such as sympathy and guilt and typical human conscience that seems to get in the way of everyone else. 

She is the more uncontrollable one––more ruthless, thinking of nothing when she crosses lines that even Yama at the time knew not to cross (a monster). 

Because there has and always will be this little irritating feeling in the back of her mind, like a fly buzzing around the room, a feeling like waking up in the middle of the night suddenly with no clue where you are and what you are doing here and who you are supposed to be. It’s a constant tug at her that says she’ll never truly belong, she’ll never truly be accepted, not by anyone; and she is doomed spend the rest of her existence stumbling sleeplessly through a loveless and barren landscape. 

Connection is lost to her before she even had it, and the only thing she can do about it is attempt to drown out that constant buzzing with adrenaline and battle stress and exhaustion. 

She has always been the one who forgets about things like empathy and consequences and responsibility in her own pursuit of that intense, all-annihilating thrill. Always the one who does not have the same misgivings found naturally in other souls such as guilt or personal morals to stop her from doing what is required to get what she wants (what the hell, what are you doing), and she is the one who has a kind of impulsiveness that borders right on deranged because it was either that or the lonely, awful feeling of being made _wrong._

She's always been the more dangerous of the two of them, the one who knows what she wants and has nothing holding her back from doing whatever possible to achieve it _(there is a problem here and it's that you don't think there's a problem)._

But that was why Yama was always right there beside her. 

Because even if Yama usually joins her in the battles and mass destruction, and has almost as much blood on his hands as she does, he still knows that it isn't all there is in the universe. 

Yama has always been the one to draw the lines for her, been there to remind her how to be human again (and not a monster), to tell her how to find beauty in things that aren't just chaos and destruction and show her what the golden things look like ( _here, this is called family and here, that is love-- and look at what we have right now, that is called friendship_ ).

If she ever gets herself lost, it'll be alright because Yama will be at her side to drag her back even if she can't find the right way again ( _always, dear comrade_ ).

There is a scar on Yama's brow, one that runs diagonally from the corner of his right eye to the left side of his forehead. She knows it's there because she put it there.

It's the day she first learns of fear.

It was a mock battle ( _you are the most worthy opponent I can think of and we haven't even once had a spar together_ ) that lasted three days straight, that ended with her nearly cleaving his skull open. 

As Yama laid there in the midst of the destroyed forest, half of it leveled and half still on fire, and the craters in the ground blowing smoke to the ozone-scented air, she remembers clutching his head helplessly, pinching at the skin and frantically trying to staunch the flow of blood that seemed to be going everywhere (she knows how to cut through bone and flesh and she knows how to totally annihilate a soul until there isn't even a molecule of reishi left, but she doesn't know how to fix instead of destroy).

She remembers being afraid that she was afraid of him dying and leaving her alone. She remembers it showing on her face and Yama, with one half of his body completely soaked in his own blood, had taken one look at her and laughed. ( _Finally,_ he'd said. _About time you know about it, even if it's a terrible thing to feel._ ) And she'd slapped him for laughing at her and then regretted it immediately afterwards when it causes more blood to gush out.

(That day is the same day she learns of love.)

Eventually, while fighting hollows that have slaughtered yet another village in Rukongai, Yama has an idea ( _have you ever wondered_ ) about starting a school ( _an academy_ ) in which people can learn how to protect themselves and maybe defend others as well ( _perhaps it can finally bring peace to Soul Society, we'll finally have something to protect_ ). She's never thought about other people that way, but goes with it anyway, because he had said have you ever wondered, and she never has but she wants to (so show me).

Two thousand years ago she only had one friend, and that was enough.


	3. Change (This Is Where It Begins)

When you have a couple centuries of memories in your mind, time holds no meaning.

It has something to do with perspective, according to some book she'd read about a german philosopher. The longer you live the shorter the years seem because when you've only just lived three years, one year is an entire third of your life. But to live for hundreds of years-- and she eventually stopped counting-- it's like you blink and _bam_ , there's a decade gone.

She has trouble for the first couple of years of this second life trying to figure out weeks, months, and years and time. Eventually she figures it out just in time for her ninth birthday. Her dad breaks her arm.

So Shinku knows that she's thirteen years old when they move to a new town. Karakura town sounds like any other quaint town in the suburbs, but when they arrive she discovers that it _isn't normal at all._

She's heard of places in the world of the living where the land is naturally enriched with high-leveled reiatsu, but she has never expected that this seemingly normal suburban town would be one of them. Because even she, with the pitifully little amount of reiatsu she has now, can feel the ancient flow of spiritual energy practically vibrating in the air. This place is very popular, she could tell, with hollows and spirits alike.

It's like a slap to the face, now, when she knows she can't do anything, and it _burns._

But it doesn't change anything. Her daily itinerary is still get up and get out of the house, return at night to cook dinner for her dad, wait until he finishes, and escape as soon as he does, rinse and repeat.

When spring comes, she goes to school. No one knows her there, but all the essentials are there. Children are still afraid of her. Teachers, still unsettled. Rinse and repeat.

It's not until her dad stabs her in the arm with a nearby culinary knife when she breaks a cup after waking up from a lifetime of being able to crush hollows to paste barehanded, that something happens out of routine.

Because that's when she meets the human with the most insane amount of spiritual energy she has ever seen in both of her two lives.

"Hey there," says the human. "What do you need so early in the morning?"

Shinku stares. She doesn't know how the man and the two little girls can sit so calmly at the table behind this literal reiatsu _powerhouse._

"Um," says the human when he doesn't get an answer. "We're having breakfast right now."

Remembering what she came here for, Shinku looks into the human's brown eyes and is idly impressed when he doesn't flinch. Everyone else does. (The fault probably lies in her eyes-- cunning, predatory and too intelligent.)

"This is a clinic, right?" She asks rather needlessly, since there is a sign outside that states 'Kurosaki Clinic.'

"Yeah— _oh_ ," says the human when he catches sight of her arm, which is swaddled in paper towels that are quickly turning red and threatening to drip onto the doorstep. He's quick to drag her inside.

"We have a patient," he tells the man and two girls at the table-- most likely his family-- as he practically carries her to another room across the hallway. "Eat without me."

"Okay," mumbles the black haired girl as she stuffs a big serving of egg into her mouth.

The light haired one looks worried. "Do you need any help, Ichigo?"

"I'm fine!"

She's sat on a bed in what looks to be the official clinic part of the house, instead of the living area. The human-- his name is Ichigo, apparently-- treats her arm thoroughly and efficiently, like any other professional, though he doesn't look a year older than his teens.

He asks for her name and it take a few seconds to recall the surname that's been added to her name, that still feels strange and unfitting, she answers with, "Kusanagi Shinku," before the silence causes any more suspicion. He writes it down on a list, probably the clinic's directory.

"How'd you get a stab wound from breakfast?" He asks when she tells him her excuse.

"I'm clumsy," she replies with her premeditated response. Rinse and repeat.

Ichigo looks a little suspicious. "Do you usually have to get four stitches whenever you trip?"

Shinku shrugs. "Sometimes."

The human still looks unsure of her answer, but Shinku doesn't let him ask any further (she's used to this, the questions and the looks. It's good to be in tune with the social behaviors and effects of this world and age, mainly to know how to manipulate it).

"We're done, right? I have to get home." She stands up, inspecting the neatly wrapped gauze and deeming it acceptable. "How much do I pay for this?"

Ichigo's eyebrows shoot up to his orange hairline so fast Shinku is surprised they don't simply fly right off. "How old are you?" He asks incredulously.

"Thirteen."

"Why aren't your parents with you?"

"My dad already left for work. He wasn't there when I injured myself."

There's a moment of hesitation, then Ichigo decides to let the issue drop. "First time for minors are free," he says, even though he knows there is no such thing in their policy. "Just try not to end up here anytime soon."

"Okay. Thank you." Shinku bows according to proper manner, then leaves by herself.

Ichigo is left looking at her retreating back at the doorway, still not sure what to think of it. He turns to see Karin next to him, Yuzu and Dad not far behind.

"You ever seen her at school before?" He asks, just in case.

Yuzu nods. "She's from the 2B class a year above us. I heard she just moved in."

"People usually avoid her," Karin adds.

Ichigo looks at her. "Really? Why?"

She shrugs. "Apparently she's really scary and weird. All my friends are aftaid of her."

"Are you?" He asks out of curiosity.

Yuzu looks unsure but Karin says, "Me?" She casts a glance in the direction that Kusanagi Shinku left and shakes her head. "Nah. I've seen scarier. And weirder."

She turns to her twin and bops her on the head. "You shouldn't be weirded out either, Yuzu. Besides, if there's anything that actually tries to hurt you, Ichi-nii and I will kick its ass."

Ichigo grunts in agreement. Yuzu laughs. And they're all too busy to notice that the entire time since the strange girl had arrived bleeding on their doorstep, Isshin hasn't said a single word.

* * *

As soon as breakfast is done, Ichigo piles a plate of extras and takes it to his room.

"Did you notice anything?" He questions Rukia as she eats her breakfast, because he knows that she must have been quietly observing everything from his room. "Sense anything, or whatever the hell it is you do?"

"I don't think she's a spirit, if that is what you're implying. There's close to nothing abnormal about her," Rukia says over a mouthful, fork in hand. She's clicking away on her cellphone with the other hand.

"Close to nothing? What do you mean?"

"Well, if you ignore that fact that she somehow managed get what is obviously an intentional knife wound on her arm in such a place that easily eliminates self-infliction or accident..." Rukia trails off as her phone beeps urgently. She reaches for her glove. "Time to go. There's a hollow nearby."

"Right," says Ichigo, and his soul is shoved out of his body and he's out the window before it even hits the floor. He can think about it later.


	4. Bomb (T-Minus Five)

She is an explosion waiting to happen.

There is a quiet, intense swirling mixture of _boredomapathyruthlessnessand **fury**_ inside of her, like there's a sleeping volcano under her skin that's always on the verge of erupting but never doing it (and the day it does is the day the world ends).

She goes through the motions without actually being there. She often wakes up feeling as if she is falling asleep instead, she dresses herself in clothes that feel as if they are not her own, on a body that is not her. She cooks breakfast and then goes to school where she doesn't see the point of it, because there's no career she wants that higher education will give her, because she doesn't feel like she belongs in this world.

There's a generous fount of ambition inside of her but nothing to direct it towards, because everything disappoints her. Nothing is as good and as natural and genuine as the life she remembers in her dreams-- and sometimes she feels as if nothing is real anymore.

There's no excitement she can find, not the burn you get from fighting or the chills of life-threatening situations. She's read in a book that scientifically, this means that her body doesn't produce the normal levels of euphoric pheromones unless she's doing something that would make normal people's levels go through the roof. And isn't that so appropriate? That her second body is also made wrong, to match her wrong soul? It is, isn't it.

She loathes it--loathes absolutely everything. Somehow all the centuries she's spent together with Yamamoto has become undone in the face of in thirteen years spent alone, where she's turned into this wild creature of bestial, ugly, _inhuman_ hatred.

Because somewhere inside, there's still that hopeless thrill seeker that's always been by Yama's side.   
_________________

Ishida Uryuu is on his way to the 24-hour convenience store when he meets a girl who's far too young to be wandering around on the streets at one in the morning (never mind his own actions).

She stands alone at the edge of the circle of light that a streetlight makes on the ground. Half of her face is obscured by shadow but her blonde hair is almost silver in the reflected light. She looks to be around middle school age and she is both too skinny and too lanky in the way that pubescent growth isn't nearly an excuse for it.

It's still the middle of a hot, sweltering March night and Uryuu just wants to get a cold drink and get back to his house to work on his summer vacation homework, but he's also a respectable human being so he asks the girl if she needs any help.

The moment she turns her dark eyes upon him, Uryuu thinks that he's made a big fat mistake.

Because young children that age are supposed to be arrogant, naive, and full of shit because they think they've achieved some sort of great milestone just by graduating primary school, but this— _this_ is just a ball of barely contained alien intellect and nearly palpable _ancient_ rage tightly compressed into the general shape of a human girl.

She wants a popsicle.

So he goes into the convenience store, gets what he needs, pays for it, and comes back out to find that the girl is still waiting there by the streetlight, as still and patient as a statue. He stares into those twin black circles and feels as if he is staring into the bottomless abyss itself.

Uryuu gives her the popsicle.

She takes it, thanks him, and leaves.

Uryuu's initial conclusion of the girl is that she is to be avoided. He is from a race of warriors but every Quincy knows when it is cowardice and when it is just healthy caution in the face of an overwhelming threat, and that girl is a threat to everyone who crosses her path, no matter what the intentions the trespasser has. Her gait and manners are far too confident for a mere child who should only be 13 years old at most, her eyes are far too knowing.

But then he sees the bruise on her neck, almost hidden by high collar of her jacket, that looks far too close to a fingerprint to be comfortable, and he worries.

Because apparently the popsicle isn't for her to eat, he discovers as he catches another half-second glimpse of her as he passes the park on his way home. She's sitting quietly on the rusty swings in the empty place, the desolation making it seem even more sad, and the frozen bar, still untouched in its wrapper, is pressed to her ribs.


	5. Connection (Four)

It's fitting that it rains on June 17th, the anniversary date of Ichigo's mother's death. It is raining just like how it had been raining six years ago.

Shinku used to like the rain. It is her element, just as fire is Yama's. Now it is just annoying.

The rain makes the blur of boundaries even worse. It melts everything together until she keeps on tripping over ghosts that only she can see, wading hour after hour through the sleepless fog, borderline delirious, kept outside day and night because there is no home for her to stay in (and she can do nothing about it). She is barely keeping the last string of her festering sanity from snapping through sheer bullheaded stubbornness (and yet she always asks herself, why even bother?).

On the day of the death anniversary, it's raining the size of marbles and Inoue Orihime looks out of her window and sees a girl walking around on the street with no umbrella. She opens her door and calls out across the street, inviting the poor girl inside to dry off, and perhaps wait out the downpour.

There's less than ten seconds of hesitation, but the look on the girl's face would be almost comical if it isn't so sad. The small form in the grey driving rain slowly makes her way over.

The girl's eyes, when Orihime sees them, are old and beyond tired, and full of blistering, boiling, monstrous _rage_.

(It's rage against the indignation, against the fact that she's now trapped in this puny pathetic body with not even a minute fraction of her former glory. It's a furious wild beast inside her soul, ramming itself over and over into the bars that hold it in captivity.

Rage-- because having centuries of knowledge and experience and yet being unable to use any of it is like standing at the top of a skyscraper, looking down at the tiny people living their tiny lives, like ants, and wondering that if you jump, will you fall or fly?) 

Once safely Inside, Orihime leaves the girl dripping on the doormat, babbling happy nonsense as she gets the very biggest towel she can find. The girl, without even trying to, does her best at drowning in the vast expanse of fluffy fabric.

When she bundles up the small girl in the towel and sits her down on one of the sitting cushions at her table, Orihime introduces herself and subsequently learns that the girl with the eyes of a beast is named Shinku, and isn't that an absolutely lovely name, her favorite color has always been red. Shinku replies that red is the color of blood.

"So you can make the connection that my name means the color of blood," Shinku tells her, the cloudy look on her face a sign that her mind is a hundred miles away.

Laughing lightheartedly, Orihime serves the tea. There's potato chips with honey and red bean dip on the side.

Shinku sips her tea, pokes at the chips like she isn't sure whether it is actually for her to eat or not. Her eyes dart everywhere around the bright, happy room and her shoulders hunch unconsciously. Without even noticing she is doing it herself, Shinku seems to shrink in size right before the other girl's eyes.

Orihime is silently observant and careful and she distracts Shinku with endless bubbly chatter, to which she only gets single syllable and absentminded responses but doesn't mind it at all. She takes in the wary, utterly _bewildered_ look on the girl's face and decides that yes, she has never met another person so unfamiliar and so unused to simple, genuine kindness.

There's something about Shinku that doesn't seem quite normal. She looks far too soul-weary, too wise and worn down, like something ancient stuck in a child's frail body. She can't quite put a name to it. Human is stretching it but creature is too vague.

Orihime doesn't know what it is, but Shinku does. She knows.

It's a monster-- not carnivorous or bloodthirsty or even menacing, but a parasite-- something eating her life and mind and willpower from the inside out, lapping her brain matter out from her skull with greedy fervor. She is already halfway down to falling apart at the seams and there's no saving her because _**she is that monster.**_

When it is getting late and the rain still looks to be pouring down as strong as before, Orihime pushes an umbrella into Shinku's hands and keeps watch at the door until the girl turns a corner and she can't see her anymore.

She hopes that Shinku will remember her open offer of refuge. Orihime will always welcome her into her home, no matter when in the future.

It's not so surprising, when you take into consideration Orihime's all-encompassing acceptance of anything potentially life threatening, unnaturally strange, anything inhuman.


	6. Gently (Three)

The Gates to Hell open this week. Shinku knows vaguely when during the day but can't tell where, only that it is somewhere nearby that a poor damned soul is dragged into the depths of hell.

* * *

Humans fear is fragile. It's often painful and it's paralyzing. Too little of it makes a fool; too much and people break like glass.

She's on her way home from school when she's ambushed by a group of upperclassmen.

They're all only a year older than her, but they're also so much bigger. They start talking. Apparently one of their younger siblings took insult to her existence, says she's been terrorizing the class with her freakishness so they're playing the cool protective older sibling and have gathered their friends here to 'teach her a lesson'.

They advance upon her, malice in their eyes and intent in their raised fists.

And the world suddenly comes into focus, like a broken lens fixed, sharp and defined and beautiful. _Real._

Somehow she knows, when she was reborn, reborn like a phoenix rising from the everlasting flame, that the inferno had burned away and purged from her everything Yama had tried to impart in the centuries before-- and when she cooled, there was nothing left of her but shining sharpness and serrated razor edge and cold diamond hardness.

There has always been a cruel place at the heart of her, a place that is cruel and hard and lonely, that Yama, no matter how hard he tried, could never connect with. Only things like hollows and death can ever touch it, give back to her a purpose. Hollows, death, and _battle._

She looks at the bigger, older children surrounding her, and sees nothing but things to defeat, conquer, and tear apart.

"You'll regret ever being born," one of them says. (She already does).

There is something singing underneath her skin, a deep-seated thrum, a need to fight, and the thirst for victory. A want for everything under the sun, a sort of terrible starving digging into her gut.

"Come at me," she says, and oh, there's that ravenous beast inside of her, the one that Yama always tried to keep at bay when he was there. _But now he's not._ "I **dare** you."

And the children, not knowing how horribly stupid they are, too blinded to realize exactly what they are actually going up against, attack.

She doesn't know exactly what kind of expression appears on her face, as she faces them down, all four of them, striking out with her fists, her pointy elbows, kicking out when one of them tries to hold her in place, but she thinks that maybe it is a smile.

Because now she feels alive, as she grunts when someone kicks her in the gut and another strikes her on the head, alive like she only has been in her dreams. She dodges and jumps, light and nimble, centuries of experience backing her even when her body is screaming in protest, all the while carving a bloody path through the group of children with her fists.   
________________

This is the scene that Yasutora Sado stumbles across on his way back from school.

There's a little girl with scrapes and bruises all over her, knuckles bruised purple and bloody.

She stands in the midst of what looks like a literal battle zone, her enemies all defeated and scattered around her feet. Even both smaller and younger than her opponents, and with the odds of four against one, it looks like she won.

The middle school upperclassmen are staring up at her in abject horror, a sort of terror on their pale faces that is like a lion had poked its head into a cave expecting easy prey only to discover that a dragon had been sleeping inside.

There's a cry-- the strangled sound of a frightened animal-- and then the children scramble away, leaving only the girl behind.

It makes Sado think to a time long past, back to when he had been standing exactly where that girl is standing, in the aftermath of another brutal fight. (And the adults had called him freak; violent, wild beast to be put down.)

But when she turns to him, he immediately amends that thought, he's never been in that place before, perhaps he has stood next to it but he's never had those terrifying dark eyes, that are still burning from the adrenaline rush with an all-consuming infinite _hunger._

She cocks her head (like a predator, curious, observant of this new prey that's crossed its path) and a streak of blood runs down the side of her face. It's dark and it stands out completely on the pallor of her skin and behind the bob of silver blonde hair.

It's also red (not blue or golden like an alien) and it reminds Sado that there is an injured girl in front of him, regardless of how much she seems to be something else instead (because a monster with the face of a child still has the face of a child).

He's always had good instincts but he just doesn't listen to them sometimes. He kneels down and takes out the first aid kit in his bag.

The girl raises an eyebrow but comes over to him anyway, even as she tells him that her dad wouldn't care either way what state of health she comes home in.

Sado wipes the blood and dirt away, patches up the scraps and open cuts, wraps the split knuckles, and it's like she's never been treated this gently before in all her life, because she asks, "Why?" with the expression of someone in a foreign country with no map and no knowledge of the language. Like she has no idea why he would do this for a stranger.

He thinks it's simple, then, to think of something his abuelo once said to him, that those who know suffering are capable of being kind to others even more because of it-- that is not a sign of weakness. He tells her this, and that he used to fight a lot, too, and the girl takes it in like it's a new concept she's never heard of.

"Do you fight a lot?" Sado asks out of pure curiosity.

The girl laughs, and it's a broken, bitter sound with a whisper of _I wish I did._

"You're talking to the monster of Mashiba Middle," she says. "A quarter of the school think I'm a demon, another think I'm an alien, others believe I'm some kind of unnatural spirit, and the rest just think I'm a monster."

Sado doesn't know what to say to that, so he doesn't reply. He doesn't think he has to, in the end, because that cunning gaze of hers is as sharp as steel, and they don't miss a thing.


	7. Noblesse (Two)

Someone uses a Hollow-bait ring.

Some idiotic, brainless, reckless fool uses a Hollow-bait ring and Shinku can feel several struggles at once taking place all around the town. She can look up into the sky and see it shimmer like a heat mirage because of the sheer amount of Hollows swarming in it. She can almost hear the deafening roars of the corrupted spirits, smell them like a bloodhound locked onto a scent.

But she can't do anything. Can't even see a solid image of these Hollows, much less pull out a sword and join in on whatever slaughter party that person with Hollow bait is surely having right now. (It doesn't even have to be a sword, her bare hands would do-- or hell, her _teeth_ ).

It's a little like drowning; like staring straight at salvation in your face, though a few scant feet of water, the sun rippling through the surface like a taunt, and knowing that all you have to do is give a few little kicks and you'll be saved. But your legs are frozen, your body has betrayed you and you are stuck in your own mind, screaming at your limbs to do something, _anything_ , just not this _nothing._

Shinku hears the faint screams of corrupt, rotten souls and her heart sings together with them, her fingers twitch at her sides and her bones ache with longing. There's a scream of her own perched right under her chin and she wonders if it will sound no different from the damned souls all around her.

She's so utterly helpless and so entirely out of control no one's even laughing anymore.

* * *

Shinku's back at the clinic. This time she has a dislocated arm and a spilt lip.

It's at night when she comes, just after dinnertime for most families. And when she appears at their door, lip nearly divided all the way down to her teeth, blood dribbling down her chin to her shirt as her left arm dangles limply at her side, Kurosaki Isshin nearly has heart failure. 

(He looks at the girl called Kusanagi Shinku and it's almost like she can tell, as all creatures of her ilk can tell, what his secret is.)

Her lip requires two stitches and they wrap her shoulder after they put it back in place. (When Isshin wraps it, he doesn't miss the other splotchy bruises on her back and her ribs.)

"I fell down the stairs," she tells them. Her dad isn't here because he's doing overtime at work.

Karin and Yuzu haven't exactly lived the most average of children's lives, but they're still naive enough to think nothing of it.

But Ichigo's had friends, back in middle school, when he was going through one of his dark, angsty phases and getting into fist fights every hour of the day. When everyone thinks you're a delinquent you attract a certain type of group-- kids who've come together because they're the leftovers of society, nobody wants them in their circle of friends so they form their own. He's never been part of a gang, but he's had a couple of friends who were, driven by certain circumstances at home to find refuge and fellowship in other places. Ichigo recognizes the signs. And the excuses.

Isshin can too, and no matter what else he may see in the girl, a parent-- even with as many other identities as he does-- is always a parent.

* * *

Kuchiki Rukia is curious about the girl that keeps coming to the clinic in multiple states of injury (always with a different excuse, but there's only so many times you can use 'I tripped' or 'I fell' before it's simply too suspicious).

It's two in the morning when she's on her way back to Ichigo's home after a visit to Urahara's shop (the gikai is still a growing struggle to use, her reiatsu isn't replenishing at all). She finds the girl in the neighborhood playground. She's sitting at the base of the climbing dome. The shade of blonde is unmistakable.

She contemplates making her presence known but stops in her tracks when she notices that Kusanagi Shinku is talking. Confused and mildly alarmed, Rukia makes a cursory glance around the park and checks for any Pluses or other spirits but sees nothing. For all intents and purposes, Shinku seems to be talking aloud to a wayward tuft of grass.

Rukia edges closer to hear better just in time to catch onto the start of a new sentence.

"Sometimes sleep feels so much better I just never want to wake up ever again," Shinku tells the grass in her quiet, solemn way. Something passes over her features like a shadow, and at once she seems years older than a mere thirteen. "But I do..." she says, and there's something like resignation in her voice. "I do."

Rukia doesn't really need to wonder what happened, what is happening that she can't see right now. Because she isn't blind, deaf or dumb, and she's lived in Rukongai for her entire childhood. When you've grown up in Inuzuri, the 78th District, third worst of all the eighty districts of Rukongai, you quickly learn to recognize the uglier sides of human nature, like cruelty and violence.

Like black eyes that somehow always have dark shadows underneath them from sleep deprivation because you don't feel safe sleeping in your own house. Like the boyish clothes and ratty sneakers, because pants hide bruises better than dresses and staying away from home as much as possible does that to your shoes.

Like the way the girl looks at other people; judgmental and untrustingly, calculating the reach of their arm and leg silently in her head, how fast they are to move, the potential threat level.

Rukia notices them all, has lived long enough to understand what she sees. And although she's in the land of the living now, some things are simply universal.


End file.
